First of all, I’ve never seen the musical before, which is probably very important because if someone already loves the musical is bound to be harsher in their judgement of this movie.
Still, they definitely went all out with this, and many times I could have happily done without the special effects. I liked the ‘cat costume’, let’s call it, they were quite cute cats :-) but the rest of the effects were terrible, I mean the big house where the two scoundrel-cats live, and the railway, and oh my, the train wagon, what got into their minds I don’t know, it was terrible to watch, they should have stayed in one room, dance and sing, there was no need for the house or the train, and of course I would have gladly done without the mices singing or the cockroaches marching or whatever they were doing, they tried too hard, really, and failed. It was not nice to watch and frankly quite annoying.
This being said, I have no trouble with the rest. When I looked on the internet for the songs titles (that for some reason are not included in the credits, I watched till the end and there is only one, Beautiful Ghosts, probably because they added Taylor Swift’s name as an author beside Andrew Lloyd Webber), I also saw that this movie got seven nominations to the Razzies, and really, why? There was nobody else who was bad that year? Because it wasn’t so bad, the acting, come on, it wasn’t worth a ‘best’ award, but it didn’t deserve a ‘worst’ award either.
The songs were all okay, although the only one that leaves a sign is Memory, and not just because it’s the most famous, but because it was really ‘performed’, the voice was broken while singing because it was crying, figuratively speaking, not for real, but it felt real, like any acting should, you know.
I liked the magical Mr Mistoffelees a lot :)
A bit of story, since it was new to me:
A kitten, Victoria, is abandoned and found by a group of cats that call themselves the Jellicle cats. They sing to describe who they are, then more songs as she knows more cats (I didn’t like the puss in spats number), and they explain to her that it is the night of the ball when one cat is chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer to be reborn to a new life, a sort of cat-heaven to be reincarnated, I say. Macavity is a criminal cat with magic that kidnaps all the contestants because he wants to win, but when Old Deuteronomy arrives and he has kidnapped all the others, she still refuses to chose him. She says that it is the soul that counts and she will never chose him, so he magics her away too to force her hand but she still refuses, and Mr Mistoffelees brings her back after being encouraged by Victoria and the other cats.
Victoria sees an old, sad cat that sings alone of her past memories, and encourages her to come in and sing, and she is chosen and ascends, up and up, until she disappears.
The cats that had been kidnapped free themselves now and join the others. Victoria is now accepted as a Jellicle cat and has found a place to belong.
It’s still not clear to me if the choice was made because after all she was the only contestant present or if she would have been chosen anyway, since after all all the others were still away, kidnapped by Macavity.
Victoria - Francesca Hayward
Mr Mistoffelees - Laurie Davidson
Macavity - Idris Elba
Old Deuteronomy - Judy Dench
Gus the theatre cat - Ian McKellen
Bombalurina - Taylor Swift
Munkustrap - Robbie Fairchild
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